The Last City Box Set

by Logan Keys

  “Whoa!”

  —just in time to avoid my being crushed by a military vehicle speeding past, loaded with Kiniva’s men. They fire automatic rifles into the air.

  Everywhere, the larger avenues echo with marching boots as more guards arrive. I see an empty side street.

  “Come on!” I holler and tow the bat-wielding Irishman with me.

  We retreat from the steady roar of angry citizens, taking the long way around to my section.

  Near my door, a woman stands, wringing her hands. “What do we do?” she says. “My children!”

  “Get them inside,” Nate answers.

  She’s familiar, and from my commune. “Wait.” I stop her before she leaves. “Do you know where Manda and Serena are?”

  She covers her mouth, muttering between shaky fingers. “You don’t know?”

  Dread sinks in.

  “They went out … to look for you,” the woman says. “Last night, they searched for you past curfew and—”

  “No …” I whisper from the immediate guilt.

  She nods, and Nate puts a hand on my shoulder.

  “The guards,” the woman explains. “They took them away.”

  With a sad glance, she turns to leave.

  My knees weaken.

  “It’s not your fault …” Nate tries.

  “Yes,” I say. “Yes it is.”

  “Liza.”

  “Let’s go.”

  It’s hardest to say goodbye to my piano, but it’s not going to survive the war. And on the list of things lost on this day, it’s quite small.

  Tonight, this city will burn. After stuffing my music box and my letter into my pack, the very top-most of my stack of books catches my eye. George Washington’s history: Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

  My fingers smooth over the words.

  Nate waits patiently while my weapon search yields only a frying pan. With it tight in my grip, we step from my door back into the chaos.

  Ash City lives up to its name. Flames from several nearby buildings blaze out of control, while guards fight to put them out. On our block, they wield high-powered hoses to blow uprisers back with the immense pressure.

  The water turns our direction and it hits me, gallon after painful gallon. We fly backwards, and I lose my pan within minutes of trying to get back onto the main road.

  Nate’s taken in too much water by the time we hit the cross street and he’s coughing it up, bent over in a doorway. He’s lost his bat, too, and we’re almost certain we’re about to be arrested.

  Gunfire pocks the nearby walls, and we drop to the ground and cover our heads, while a showdown ensues between the guards and some of Kiniva’s men. When we’re brave enough to check, we notice the guards have retreated. They’ve even turned loose the hose; it twists on the ground like a snake without a head, spewing the roaring geyser every which way. A few citizens grab hold of it, and together, they turn it on the backs of the fleeing guards.

  To make matters worse, a water main has broken—ruptured, likely, by the explosions—and with us being on the lower end, water is now ankle deep and rising. We wade through, a slow process made even more sluggish by our stopping for the fallen. Some are in need of aid, some are too far gone to do more than move them out of the way.

  It’s impossible not to notice the pink tinge to the water coming in from Main Street. A gruesome sight, and the first bit of color in Anthem.

  “We have to find higher ground!” I yell.

  Nate nods, calling back, “Let’s go!”

  We tow a long string of children and elderly, hands linked in a line, out of the deep end.

  Bodies float face down, some face up, and I keep my eyes averted until I see a familiar-looking smock that makes me let go of the chain of hands to wade toward him.

  “No! No no no.” I grab the body, flipping it over to reveal the lifeless brown eyes I knew I’d find. The wound on his head has re-opened, but he’s long gone, having been in the water whenever he fell.

  “Journee,” I moan.

  My vision blurs while I drag him to a floating slab of wood and lay him down onto a half-sunken table.

  “Did you know him?” Nate asks, and I wipe my eyes, nodding.

  “Yes.”

  “Liza,” he says softly, after too short a time. “We have to go.”

  The next area of Section is flooded, too, and the next. We press on, and the line of people continues to grow behind us. Most are too injured to fight, or had been forced from their homes into the battle by the rising water and simply didn’t want to drown.

  We make it to the middle of the city and to a dry section … where the guards have taken their full force. There, they stand facing us, a gigantic blob of black, purged and pristine. Visors watch us where we halt dripping and coughing, some of our ranks severely injured.

  One guard silently walks down our line before placing the end of a gun barrel to my forehead.

  “Liza!” Nate shoves me out of the way. The guard fires, but misses us both as we land in a tangle on the asphalt.

  Another guard stops the first. “Citizen Liza … ?”

  The second hauls me up by the arm. “What is your name?”

  I’m not afraid of him; I’ve come too far to cower before these monsters. “My name is Liza Randusky.” I shake loose from his grip. “Daughter of Jiles and Minuette Randusky.”

  Nate starts to come forward, but my look stays him as more guards surround me. They take each of my arms and march me away.

  “Stay strong, Liza!” Nate yells as a guard holds him back. “Keep the faith!”

  After being shoved into a vehicle, dripping wet and carted off to God knows where … faith is all I have left.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Tommy

  The ocean waves seem to get larger as we approach the shore, worsening my seasickness. I can’t decide if I should just puke, or keep fighting it. The trip to the Americas was supposed to take a couple of weeks, but we had to circle round to avoid the Authority’s ambushes, so it’s taken a month.

  Thirty long days of angry rolling green depths full of monsters that’ve grown unchecked. It’s like an epic mouth of the world, ready to eat us whole. Vast. How had I forgotten how big the ocean is?

  In the ship’s bowels, penning a letter to Joelle, I can’t concentrate. Every few seconds, chairs tip and smack the hull before flipping end over end to the other side. Thankfully, the bench I’m on is bolted down.

  I glance up to see Vero standing at the bottom of the stairwell. She grips the railing in a hard lean left, then right, like a skier.

  “We here?” I ask.

  I’ve not spoken to her since throwing her out of my bunk that night.

  She nods, blowing her cheeks out, fighting her stomach down. Vero’s golden skin has drained to an unhealthy shade, almost matching the foamy water beating at the ship’s sides.

  “The Authority … ?” I ask.

  Vero nods again, then burps into her hand as a huge wave tips us hard, threatening to roll the ship all the way over. That would end our trip on a soggy note.

  We stay perilously slanted until Mother Nature lets us go again.

  The Underground had hoped to make a stealthy entrance, but instead, we’ve attracted the great eye of the Authority who’s been sending out subs, helicopters, and ships to “greet” us. This makes our own ship retreat, tail firmly between her legs, and reroute to try another avenue.

  Luckily—or unluckily—enough, a storm’s hit, so they’ve lost us for now.

  With my hand cupped to the back of my head, I stare down at the sheet of paper. “Look … Vero—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Tommy. I know about your monster. I get it. Before, when you said you were scared … I just get it, okay? Let’s just live through this first.”

  “The girl. I know you brought her up before. Daisy.” It feels good to say her name out loud again. “Not long after, we met up with the UG on the west coas
t. We’d thought it was more like the old Army.”

  Vero raises her brows, and I laugh.

  “Yeah. Daisy had insisted on joining with me. Following. I was furious. She always was like that, you know?—a tagalong. But once we got to the coast, I finally let up on her about it. She looked good in that uniform, fit her like it was made … Anyway, that night, we had first watch together, but she’d switched with someone. Trying to give me space, I think.”

  I rub the back of my neck, trying to work out the tension. My hands clench just thinking about this part. “The next day, all they found was a bloody boot.”

  Vero’s dark eyes turn sad. “That’s not your fault, Hatter.”

  My smile’s dry.

  Changing the subject, I ask, “Where are we?”

  She covers her mouth, holds her other hand over her stomach for a moment before she can speak. “California, I think.”

  I rub my brow in frustration. We’ll have to cross the entire wild, zombie-infested US to get to the city now. Who plans these missions?

  The ship’s horn blows—the first time in a few days—and we run up the stairs, bouncing off the sides like we’re in a fun house, only there’s nothing fun about it. We step onto the deck and into the spray, just as the first explosion shudders through the enormous hunk of steel beneath our feet.

  A boat’s in the distance. A small light blinks before another explosion rocks us when the shot lands too close. They aren’t reaching us yet, but soon … soon.

  A helicopter circles, and I run to the other side where coastline sits in the distance.

  No time to get nostalgic, but that sandy beach could only be SoCal. My heart clenches and my palms tingle with the thought of touching it.

  Home.

  “Home!” Vero yells.

  With a whoop of excitement, I turn and grab her around the waist while she pumps her fists. And we laugh until another explosion sets us back on our heels.

  “Where’s Cory?” I yell.

  Vero shakes her head, and I move over to the gunners. “All right, fellas, what are you waitin’ for? This thing has the reach, and that little tug boat doesn’t.” Then, I add in my best Sergeant Nolan impression: “Send her to the bottom, boys.”

  They aim the giant gun at the boat and fire, right as a wave the size of a small mountain separates us.

  When we see the boat again, it’s farther away in forced retreat. Our ship might be an older bird, but she’s steady as all get out in a fight.

  The gunner aims again, and I slap his shoulder, trying to redirect. “No, no, they’re still out of range. The chopper, man!”

  He swings around and fires at the helicopter—once, twice … before a direct hit. It turns the sky an even brighter orange, and that’s when I first notice its color.

  “Orange skies!” I point up, shading my eyes in excitement. Vero squints up, too.

  The helicopter crashes into the ocean like a falling star, and we both turn greedily toward the coast.

  I shout above the wind, “Where the hell is Cory!”

  Cory’s supposed to be in charge. I’ll have to put the teams together myself. I cup my hands to Vero’s ear. “We’re gonna have to do this quick,” I tell her, “so the ship can get out of range! Tell the men to get the boats ready!” I squeeze her arm and say more quietly, “We’re going home, Vero. Home.”

  She snaps her heels together and salutes, before we run in separate directions across the bow, giving orders.

  Most of the boats are deployed in record time. Everyone’s excited to see the coast, despite the fact that we may be trundling toward certain death. Something about returning to our own country has kept us warm on those frozen Swedish nights. These sandy beaches once held young, inebriated souls whose biggest worry was a car payment and an A on an English paper.

  Being near the boardwalk gives us courage. Not real courage, but enough to muster pretense.

  I spot Cory slinking out from below deck, and he starts to climb overboard into his boat, eyes scanning the western horizon instead of the beach. I want to run over and shake him or turn him around, tell him he’s looking the wrong way.

  He’s been quiet since we left headquarters. Subdued. And staying clear of me.

  I throw a leg over the rail, but stop dead when I see what I think is a figment of my imagination standing near the bow.

  “Joelle?”

  My mind’s playing tricks on me—it has to be.

  On deck and dressed in all white, Joelle holds a tarp over her head, and she’s obviously in pain.

  I’m torn between killing her and hugging her. She sees me coming, and scrambles down the ladder to avoid the rays of sunlight shining through the storm.

  When I get to the bottom, having taken several rungs at a time, I snag her arm, lifting her off of her toes. Joelle hisses, showing long, lethal fangs.

  She struggles not to bite me, and she’s paler than pale, face drawn. She must be starving. I shake Joelle’s frail body, making her canines clack together. “I oughta throw you overboard, Jo! What in God’s name are you doing here!”

  A few tears leak out from her closed eyes, and her bottom lip quivers, threatening to puncture itself on the needles that refuse to retract being so near … food. “I thought … I should … come.”

  I shake her again, eliciting more hisses. “Are you crazy? That is absolutely insane. What have you been eating?”

  She wriggles free and falls onto her bottom in a clumsy movement so unlike the little graceful vamp. “I brought enough.”

  “It’s been a month.”

  “I know. I’ve been with the equipment. No one goes down there. But I’m out, Tommy. I’d only planned for a few weeks. That’s why I came above. I’m sorry, okay? I was scared when I heard the explosions. And I worried about you, too. But then I started to smell … people.… I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose to stave off the fear that could overtake my sense of duty. “Look, you’ve gone without food for a while before. Get back with the cargo and ride this can to Sweden. Will you do that? You’re practically indestructible, even without food, right? And don’t come out again, not for anything, you hear me? Should be a shorter trip home. Can you make it two more weeks?”

  She hesitates at first, but then she sits straighter and nods. It’s obvious her ride as a stowaway has been harder on her than she’d planned for.

  “Promise me,” I say.

  Joelle wipes her eyes. “I can do it. I promise.”

  I hug her goodbye again, then leave without looking back.

  She doesn’t call for me. My little Jo-Jo is growing up, doing her part in this struggle.

  And now I have to do mine.

  When I hop into my boat, I notice Vero waits, eyeing me with concern. But I avoid her gaze and dump us into the water with a splash.

  The green water churns around our little boat while the orange sky starts to clear, revealing dark, circling shapes.

  I point us toward shore with a sinking feeling that has nothing to do with zombies.

  I tell myself Joelle’s a tough gal. She’s more monster than innocent little girl. But she’s my monster.

  And I’d just left her behind … again.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Liza

  Uptown, the fighting’s even more fierce; overturned vehicles sit burning, with guards hanging out of the windows and doors.

  But their retaliation had been greater.

  Citizens litter the pavement, faces frozen in surprise where they’d fallen. Smaller bodies amidst the devastation force me to stare at the back of the headrest instead.

  We drive north into “plastic” territory, then up to a building with the Authority’s insignia at the apex. This must be their headquarters.

  Despite my confusion, they pull me from the car, hands still bound in front, and bring me over to a waiting group.

  Two people with familiar faces—Reginald and Karma Cromwell—stand there like they’v
e been expecting me. And between the two leaders of the Authority, in the flesh … is Jeremy Writer.

  “Liza,” he says, purple eyes wide, “are you okay?”

  “How sweet,” the woman says above my yammering, confused questions. “He’s always been a charmer. Gets that after you, Reginald.”

  Reginald gives a non-commutative grunt in answer.

  “What is going on, Jeremy?” I ask.

  “Liza,” he replies in a voice laced with guilt. “Meet … my parents.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Tommy

  Once on shore, I link up with Cory, who keeps shaking his head and staring at his feet. I knew he’d fold, but this … how can he not be ready to take back our home?

  “Everyone round up,” I yell over the crashing waves as we slosh out from the green foam.

  Soft sand sinks beneath my boots. The beach is dotted with soldiers, mostly regular ones; only a few Specials have been sent along to hedge our bets. We’re roughly two hundred strong, and Cory’s ducked his duty, so it’s up to me. Someone has to give operating procedures.

  “Vero, I’m field promoting you to sergeant.”

  She nods, saluting. I request that she get everyone into formation, then bring me the platoon leaders.

  They section off, both men and women.

  Women on the front line hasn’t been an issue after the last big war, when a warm body with a gun became the main qualification. Several of our heroes’ names on our great monument before it was destroyed had a “missus” before it. Vero’s proven herself head and shoulders above the other Specials, but men like Sergeant Nolan will continue to spout negativity about women on the front line.

  I walk down the formations. They stand at attention, heels pointed toward the water, and all have brave faces that hide their fear well. I don’t need them to have idiotic courage, just regular courage. I want to tell them this, but I instead give each group a passing nod and, looking as many as I can in the eye, will them to be strong.